HP decided to attract Apple’s attention with the affordable OmniBook 3, which starts at $499.99 and features a 14-inch OLED display and Qualcomm Snapdragon X processor. Compared to the $699 MacBook Neo, this offer looks quite aggressive.
This laptop is powered by an octa-core Snapdragon X running at 3.0 GHz, 30 MB cache and integrated Adreno X1 graphics card. The NPU with a performance of up to 45 TOPS is responsible for artificial intelligence tasks. The base configuration includes 8 GB LPDDR5X RAM and 256 GB NVMe SSD. The RAM is likely soldered to the motherboard, although HP has not confirmed this.
The main bets are placed on the screen. OmniBook 3 is equipped with an OLED panel with a resolution of 1920 × 1080, covering 100% of the DCI-P3 space, a response time of 0.2 milliseconds, and a brightness of 300 nits. The resolution is not as good as the MacBook Neo, but OLED should provide a more expressive picture. Autonomy also looks impressive: the 60 Wh battery is expected to run for up to 41 hours, and the included 65 W GaN adapter supports fast charging.
For a cheap laptop, this set of ports is adequate: two USB-C with DisplayPort 1.4 and Power Delivery, two USB-A, HDMI 2.1, and a 3.5mm audio jack. The OmniBook 3 is on sale at Best Buy for $499.99, while Amazon sells it for a whopping $599.99. In both cases, HP is trying to compete with Apple in an area where it usually wins on price rather than design.
Let us know what you think of this MacBook Neo competitor in the comments.
